The days of the autograph appear to be coming to an end as a picture, or "selfie", is worth more now than scribbled words on a piece of paper.

The Commonwealth Games was a watershed moment for how we engage with celebrities, thanks to Hockeyroo stars Jayde Taylor and Brooke Peris who, instead of meeting the Queen, lined her up for a royal photo bomb.

The monarch has reportedly found the phenomenon "strange", while Prince Andrew said the royal family are beginning to find public engagements "disconcerting".

"One finds that it you're walking along a crowd of people, you're faced with an iPad, not a face. But it's a live event. Why do you need to film a live event?" he told BBC Radio 1.

Closer to home and German Chancellor Angela Merkel took to the streets of Brisbane during the G20 summit to shake hands and pose for selfies on Caxton Street, while in Melbourne, instead of smiles, queen of the tweens Katy Perry was greeted with hundreds of pony tails and smart phone screens during a recent visit to Loreto Mandeville Hall Catholic girls school in the leafy suburb of Toorak.

Shane Warne has predicted the death of the autograph several times this year.

"After doing five selfies with people this morning before 8am on my morning run/walk I've come to the conclusion that the autograph is dead!" he tweeted.

The former spin king and prolific tweeter was also mobbed during Spring Racing Carnival by those keen for a piece of his pearly whites instead of his hand writing.

"Autography = 0 v Selfie = 1000+ today at the Cup!!! I called it a while ago, the autograph is officially dead."

His former wife Simone Callahan is also promoting the pastime by plugging "selfie sticks" on her Instagram account.

"Great Christmas gift," she wrote, with a photo of her posing with one of the $40 devices on Brighton Beach.

 

Taylor Swift also opined about the death of the autograph and rise of the selfie hunters.

"There are a few things I have witnessed becoming obsolete in the past few years, the first being autographs. I haven't been asked for an autograph since the invention of the iPhone with a front-facing camera. The only memento kids these days want is a selfie," she wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

President of the Universal Autograph Collectors Club Michael Hecht, one of the largest autograph societies in the world, agreed with Swift.

"It is absolutely true that there's less demand for autographs. There's a diminishing demand for print journalism. There's a diminishing demand for stamps. There's a diminishing demand for autographs," Hecht, who is also a financial adviser for Morgan Stanley, told New Republic about the hobby, which came of age in 19^th century United States when the scribbled signature of famous people was a marker of status and wealth.

"As we become more and more of a visual society, people want a visual representation of their favourite stars. We don't know them through their writing, through their letter. We know them by their faces."